Jonathan Beauregard Quick is a boy genius who lives in the fictional farming town of Queerwater Creek, Kansas. He spends the majority of his time inventing incredible things, most of which tend to backfire, despite his best efforts. The science of Jack's inventions is often based on incorrect reasoning or irrational beliefs that somehow work anyway. For example, in order to test the buttered cat paradox, he butters the back of his cat Spark-plug and, because objects always fall butter-side-down while cats always land on their feet, the cats simply hover about the town.

Most of the minor characters are very understanding, unassuming and accommodating when it relates to Jack's experiments but a running joke through the comics is that Jack is oblivious to the fact that his tinkering "in God's domain" has made his parents quietly suicidal.

Jack was seen as a member of America's Best in the final story arc of Promethea. He attempted to stop the armageddon by building a "Doomsday Machine" and then putting it in reverse. He was treated with skepticism by other characters, especially Tom Strong, and with alarm by the United States Government who transported him in a steel crate with protocols similar to Hannibal Lecter.